You are a high school student taking mathematics, more likely unwillingly than otherwise. Your parents, teachers, school administrators, government, career advisors tell you that you need to learn this subject. You may or may not agree, but at least, you want to graduate from school with good grades. However since you entered middle or high school. math has been getting progressively harder and youhavebecome frustrated thinking that you will never master this subject. Take heart. It may simply be that your approach needs correction. This article is for you.
To learn math, it is useful to understand the nature of thesubject. Mathematics is sequential. Imagine you are in a building and want to go to a higher floor, but there is no elevator. You have to go by a staircase; but each step is high.You cannot skip steps. You have to climb step one then step two, step three etc. Learning mathematics is like that. You have to understand counting before you can understand addition and subtraction; addition before multiplication. You should master angles and equations before you tackle trigonometry. You must master all topics, starting with the simplest ones, especially key topics, not only for themselves, but also because they are preparation for later work which you will not understand without the proper basis. Do you think then, that you should miss classes unnecessarily?
Some concepts are more important than others. I think of balancing equations,substitution, ratio, simplification, directed numbers among others. I say these are important because they are used over and over in learning mathematics and solving problems. So learn to identify key concepts (or have them identified for you), how they are applied and how to apply them since they are used repeatedly. You will findt his more useful than memorising formulae and algorithms. In fact with this approach you may find formulae easier to remember, because they will be better understood.
Many learners have difficulty recalling mathematical facts when they need to.You may have understood the fact or concept before, but at the time when you need to apply it you cannot bring it to mind. Research shows that keeping knowledge from being lost depends upon two things; how important the learner perceives it to be at the time that it is being learned, and how he/she is able to make connections with earlier learned knowledge. What does this mean practically for learning math?
While learning you may want to think about how important new knowledge will be to you. Think about how widely the new concept can be applied , how will it help youto do more mathematics? Of what practical use is it? How will understanding it affect your grades? How will you feel as an achiever in math? Do you gain a feeling of power when you rise to a challenge and solve a problem? Will this new learning helpyou to achieve or regain that feeling? You may have to question your teacher or do some research on some of these questions.
You must try to see connections between new and old concepts. For instance,expansion and factorisation are applications of the distributive law, which is a property of numerical operations that you have been learning from grade one; those variables in Algebra represent numbers and you are used to numbers; balancing an equation is a new way of looking at substitution. Concepts in mathematics arise logically from earlier concepts. This stems from the second important property of math; it is logical. As I have said before, always ask yourself, your classmates or your teacher, the question why. The answer will usually reveal a link to a concept that you already understand and accept. It is easy to make connections in mathematics, for the concepts are highly linked. If you are not making the connections, then you are not learning the subject, and to see the links increases the likelihood that you will recall the facts as you need them, and more importantly, be able to apply the concepts in problem solving.
Try actively to make sense of the subject. I repeat. Do all you can to make sense of the subject. Do not be satisfied to memorise formulae and methods without understanding them. You understand a step when you not only see how the result is arrived at , but also why that operation or method was used.
Explaining mathematics to someone is a good way to deepen your own understanding and a good aid to recall. Rebecca DeCamillis in her e book suggests working with a ‘study buddy’ or forming a ‘homework club’. In my opinion, it is also useful to be on the lookout for mathematical patterns and uses for mathematics in your daily life. You will begin to see more of the relevance of the subject and you may begin to regard it more highly, resulting in a more positive attitude which will help to motivate you towards learning the subject. You may even begin to like it.
Finally, try to have fun with math. Go online. Solve some math puzzles, play some math games, join a math club, enter into math competitions. You will get a lot out of the subject if you ‘befriend’ it rather than ‘ostracise ‘ it.
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